Pencillings by the Way Part 10

After supper the dancing was resumed, and the queen remained till three o'clock. At her departure the band played _cotillons_ or waltzes with figures, in which the Duke of Orleans displayed the grace for which he is celebrated, and at four, quite exhausted with fatigue and heat, I went with a friend or two into the long gla.s.s verandah, built by Napoleon as a promenade for the Empress Maria Louisa during her illness, where tea, coffee, and ices were served to those who wished them after supper. It was an interesting place enough, and had my eyes and limbs ached less, I should have liked to walk up and down, and muse a little upon its recollections, but swallowing my tea as hastily as possible, I was but too happy to make my escape and get home to bed.

LETTER XVIII.

CHOLERA--UNIVERSAL TERROR--FLIGHT OF THE INHABITANTS--CASES WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE PALACE--DIFFICULTY OF ESCAPE--DESERTED STREETS--CASES NOT REPORTED--DRYNESS OF THE ATMOSPHERE-- PREVENTIVES RECOMMENDED--PUBLIC BATHS, ETC.

_Cholera! Cholera!_ It is now the only topic. There is no other interest--no other dread--no other occupation, for Paris. The invitations for parties are _at last_ recalled--the theatres are _at last_ shut or languis.h.i.+ng--the fearless are beginning to be afraid--people walk the streets with camphor bags and vinaigrettes at their nostrils--there is a universal terror in all cla.s.ses, and a general flight of all who can afford to get away. I never saw a people so engrossed with one single and constant thought. The waiter brought my breakfast this morning with a pale face, and an apprehensive question, whether I was quite well. I sent to my boot-maker yesterday, and he was dead. I called on a friend, a Hanoverian, one of those broad-chested, florid, immortal-looking men, of whose health for fifty years, violence apart, one is absolutely certain, and he was at death's door with the cholera. Poor fellow! He had fought all through the revolution in Greece; he had slept in rain and cold, under the open sky, many a night, through a ten years' pursuit of the profession of a soldier of fortune, living one of the most remarkable lives, hitherto, of which I ever heard, and to be taken down here in the midst of ease and pleasure, reduced to a shadow with so vulgar and unwarlike a disease as this, was quite too much for his philosophy. He had been ill three days when I found him. He was emaciated to a skeleton in that short time, weak and helpless, and, though he is not a man to exaggerate suffering, he said he never had conceived such intense agony as he had endured. He a.s.sured me, that if he recovered, and should ever be attacked with it again, he would blow out his brains at the first symptom. Nothing but his iron const.i.tution protracted the disorder. Most people who are attacked die in from three to twenty-four hours.

For myself, I have felt and still feel quite safe. My rooms are in the airiest quarter of Paris, facing the gardens of the Tuileries, with windows overlooking the king's; and, as far as _air_ is concerned, if his majesty considers himself well situated, it would be quite ridiculous in so insignificant a person as myself to be alarmed. With absolute health, confident spirits, and tolerably regular habits, I have usually thought one may defy almost anything but love or a bullet. To-day, however, there have been, they say, two cases _within the palace-walls_, members of the royal household, and Casimir Perier, who probably lives well and has enough to occupy his mind, is very low with it, and one cannot help feeling that he has no certain exemption, when a disease has touched both above and below him. I went to-day to the Messagerie to engage my place for Ma.r.s.eilles, on the way to Italy, but the seats are all taken, in both mail-post and diligence, for a fortnight to come, and, as there are no _extras_ in France, one must wait his turn. Having done my duty to myself by the inquiry, I shall be content to remain quiet.

I have just returned from a social tea-party at a house of one of the few English families left in Paris. It is but a little after ten, and the streets, as I came along, were as deserted and still as if it were a city of the dead. Usually, until four or five in the morning, the same streets are thronged with carriages hurrying to and fro, and always till midnight the _trottoirs_ are crowded with promenaders.

To-night I scarce met a foot-pa.s.senger, and but one solitary cabriolet in a walk of a mile. The contrast was really impressive. The moon was nearly full, and high in the heavens, and the sky absolutely without a trace of a cloud; nothing interrupted the full broad light of the moon, and the empty streets were almost as bright as at noon-day; and, as I crossed the _Place Vendome_, I could hear, for the first time since I have been in Paris, though I have pa.s.sed it at every hour of the night, the echo of my footsteps reverberated from the walls around. You should have been in these crowded cities of Europe to realize the impressive solemnity of such solitude.

It is said that fifty thousand people have left Paris within the past week. Adding this to the thousand a day who are struck with the cholera, and the attendance necessary to the sick, and a thinned population is sufficiently accounted for. There are, however, hundreds ill of this frightful disease, whose cases are not reported.

It is only those who are taken to the hospitals, the poor and dest.i.tute, who are numbered in the official statements. The physicians are wearied out with their _private_ practice. The medical lectures are suspended, and a regular physician is hardly to be had at all.

There is scarce a house in which some one has not been taken. You see biers and litters issuing from almost every gate, and the better ranks are no longer spared. A sister of the premier, M. Perier, died yesterday; and it was reported at the _Bourse_, that several distinguished persons, who have been ill of it, are also dead. No one feels safe; and the consternation and dread on every countenance you meet, is enough to chill one's very blood. I went out to-day for a little exercise, not feeling very well, and I was glad to get home again. Every creature looks stricken with a mortal fear. And this among a French population, the gayest and merriest of people under all depressions ordinarily, is too strong a contrast not to be felt painfully. There is something singular in the air, too; a disagreeable, depressing dryness, which the physicians say must change, or all Paris will be struck with the plague. It is clear and cold, but almost suffocating with dryness.

It is very consoling in the midst of so much that is depressing, that the preventives recommended against the cholera are so agreeable.

"Live well," say the doctors, "and bathe often. Abstain from excesses, keep a clear head and good spirits, and amuse yourself as much and as rationally as possible." It is a very excellent recipe for happiness, let alone the cholera. There is great room for a nice observance of this system in Paris, particularly the eating and bathing. The baths are delightful. You are received in handsome saloons, opening upon a garden in the centre of the building, ornamented with statues and fountains, the journals lying upon the sofas, and everything arranged with quite the luxury of a palace. The bathing-rooms are furnished with taste; the baths are of marble, and covered inside with spotlessly white linen cloths; the water is perfumed, and you may lie and take your coffee, or have your breakfast served upon the mahogany cover which shuts you in--a union of luxuries which is enough to enervate a cynic. When you are ready to come out, a pull of the bell brings a servant, who gives you a _peignoir_--a long linen wrapper, heated in an oven, in the warm folds of which you are enveloped, and in three minutes are quite dry. In this you may sit, at your ease, reading, or musing, or lie upon the sofa without the restraint of a tight dress, till you are ready to depart; and then four or five francs, something less than a dollar, pays for all.

LETTER XIX.

MORNING VIEW FROM THE RUE RIVOLI--THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE--GUICCIOLI--SISMONDI THE HISTORIAN, ETC.

It is now the middle of April, and, sitting at my window on the _Rue Rivoli_, I look through one of the long, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock in the morning just breaking through the thin foliage and dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a look of summer that makes my heart leap. The cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up early, from necessity. It is delicious to step out before breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gardens, for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. It is warm enough now to sit on the stone benches about the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watching these royal swans, in the dreamy, almost imperceptible motion with which they glide around the edges of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion almost as idle; and the old wooden-legged soldier, who has been made warden of the gardens for his service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it happens, that, in the midst of a gay and busy city one may feel always a luxurious solitude; and, be he ever so poor, loiter all day if he will, among scenes which only regal munificence could provide for him. With the _Seine_ bounding them on one side, the splendid uniform _facade_ of the _Rue Rivoli_ on the other, the palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the thick woods of the _Champs Elysees_ at the opposite gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction?

The _Bois de Boulogne_, about which the Parisians talk so much, is less to my taste. It is a level wood of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut from corner to corner with straight roads for driving. The soil is sandy, and the gra.s.s grows only in tufts, the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always; and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of a word in pa.s.sing an acquaintance, I find a drive to this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either one thing or the other--cultivated grounds like the Tuileries, or the wild wood.

I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom I have been acquainted for some two or three weeks. She is very much frightened at the cholera, and thinks of going to America. The conversation turned princ.i.p.ally upon Sh.e.l.ley, whom of course she knew intimately; and she gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph. She says at times he was a little crazy--"_fou_," as she expressed it--but that there never was a n.o.bler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says, loved him like a brother. She is still in correspondence with Sh.e.l.ley's wife, of whom also she speaks with the greatest affection. There were several miniatures of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance. "No," she said, "this was the most like him," taking down an exquisitely-finished miniature by an Italian artist, "_mais il etait beaucoup plus beau--beaucoup!

beaucoup!_" She reiterated the word with a very touching tenderness, and continued to look at the picture for some time, either forgetting our presence, or affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when ever she gets too much interested to choose her words. She went on talking in French of the painters who had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's was the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's picture of herself was excessively flattered. I am sure no one would know her from the engraving of it, at least. Her cheek bones are high, her forehead is badly shaped, and, altogether, the _frame_ of her features is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst taste, too, and yet, with all this, and poetry and celebrity aside, the Countess Guiccioli is both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment would admire, even at this age, very sincerely, but not for beauty.

She has white and regular teeth, however, and her hair is incomparably the most beautiful I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light falls upon it, with a mellow softness, than which nothing could be lovelier. It is this and her indescribably winning manner which are lost in a picture, and therefore, it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most agreeable in Paris at present, and is one of the chief _agremens_ which console me for a detention in an atmosphere so triste as well as dangerous.

My bed-room window opens upon the court in the interior of the hotel Rivoli, in which I lodge. In looking out occasionally upon my very near neighbors opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-headed, scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a window in the story below. One does not trouble himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and I had seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a month or more, without curiosity enough to inquire even his name. This morning the servant came in, with a _Mon Dieu!_ and said _M. Sismondi_ was frightened by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at that moment. The name startled me, and making some inquiries, I found that my gray-headed neighbor was no other than the celebrated historian of Italian literature, and that I had been living under the same roof with him for weeks, and watching him at his cla.s.sical labors, without being at all aware of the honor of his neighborhood. He is a kind, benevolent-looking man, of about sixty, I should think; and always had a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife, who, I am told by the valet, is an Englishwoman. I regretted exceedingly the opportunity I had lost of knowing him, for there are few writers of whom one retains a more friendly and agreeable remembrance.

In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day he was remarking of how little consequence any one individual found himself in Paris, even the most distinguished. We were walking in the Tuileries, and the remark was elicited by my pointing out to him one or two celebrated persons, whose names are sufficiently known, but who walk the public promenades, quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did not think there were five people in Paris who knew him at sight, though his works were advertised in all the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris one or two years, and walked there constantly. This was putting a strong case, for the French idolize Cooper; and the peculiarly translateable character of his works makes them read even better in a good translation than in the original. It is so all over the continent, I am told. The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer Cooper to Scott; and it is easily accounted for when one remembers how much of the beauty of the Waverly novels depends on their exquisite style, and how peculiarly Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate, definite, tangible descriptions. There is not a more admired author in Europe than Cooper, it is very certain; and I am daily asked whether he is in America at present--so little do the people of these crowded cities interest themselves about that which is immediately at their elbows.

LETTER XX.

GENERAL BERTRAND--FRIEND OF LADY MORGAN--PHRENOLOGY--DR.

SPURZHEIM--HIS LODGINGS--PROCESS OF TAKING A CAST OF THE HEAD--INCARCERATION OF DR. BOWRING AND DE POTTER--DAVID THE SCULPTOR--VISIT OF DR. SPURZHEIM TO THE UNITED STATES.

My room-mate called a day or two since on General Bertrand, and yesterday he returned the visit, and spent an hour at our lodgings. He talked of Napoleon with difficulty, and became very much affected when my friend made some inquiries about the safety of the body at St.

Helena. The inquiry was suggested by some notice we had seen in the papers of an attempt to rob the tomb of Was.h.i.+ngton. The General said that the vault was fifteen feet deep, and covered by a slab that could not be moved without machinery. He told us that Madame Bertrand had many mementoes of the Emperor, which she would be happy to show us, and we promised to visit him.

At a party, a night or two since, I fell into conversation with an English lady, who had lived several years in Dublin, and was an intimate friend of Lady Morgan. She was an uncommonly fine woman, both in appearance and conversational powers, and told me many anecdotes of the auth.o.r.ess, defending her from all the charges usually made against her, except that of vanity, which she allowed. I received, on the whole, the impression that Lady Morgan's goodness of heart was more than an offset to her certainly very innocent weaknesses. My companion was much amused at an American's asking after the "fender in Kildare street;" though she half withdrew her cordiality when I told her I knew the countryman of mine who wrote the account of Lady Morgan, of which she complains so bitterly in the "Book of the Boudoir." It was this lady with whom the fair auth.o.r.ess "dined in the _Chaussee d'Antin_," so much to her satisfaction.

While we were conversing, the lady's husband came up, and finding that I was an American, made some inquiries about the progress of _phrenology_ on the other side of the water. Like most enthusiasts in the science, his own head was a remarkably beautiful one; and I soon found that he was the bosom friend of Dr. Spurzheim, to whom he offered to introduce me. We made an engagement for the next day, and the party separated.

My new acquaintance called on me the next morning, according to appointment, and we went together to Dr. Spurzheim's residence. The pa.s.sage at the entrance was lined with cases, in which stood plaster casts of the heads of distinguished men, orators, poets, musicians--each cla.s.s on its particular shelf--making altogether a most ghastly company. The doctor received my companion with great cordiality, addressing him in French, and changing to very good German-English when he made any observation to me. He is a tall, large-boned man, and resembles Harding, the American artist, very strikingly. His head is finely marked; his features are bold, with rather a German look; and his voice is particularly winning, and changes its modulations, in argument, from the deep, earnest tone of a man, to an almost child-like softness. The conversation soon turned upon America, and the doctor expressed, in ardent terms, his desire to visit the United States, and said he had thought of accomplis.h.i.+ng it the coming summer. He spoke of Dr. Channing--said he had read all his works with avidity and delight, and considered him one of the clearest and most expansive minds of the age. If Dr. Channing had not strong developments of the organs of _ideality_ and _benevolence_, he said, he should doubt his theory more than he had ever found reason to. He knew Webster and Professor Silliman by reputation, and seemed to be familiar with our country, as few men in Europe are. One naturally, on meeting a distinguished phrenologist, wishes to have his own developments p.r.o.nounced upon; but I had been warned by my friend that Dr. Spurzheim refused such examinations as a general principle, not wis.h.i.+ng to deceive people, and unwilling to run the risk of offending them. After a half hour's conversation, however, he came across the room, and putting his hands under my thick ma.s.ses of hair, felt my head closely all over, and mentioned at once a quality, which, right or wrong, has given a tendency to all my pursuits in life. As he knew absolutely nothing of me, and the gentleman who introduced me knew no more, I was a little startled. The doctor then requested me to submit to the operation of having a cast taken of my head, an offer which was too kind and particular to be declined; and, appointing an hour to be at his rooms the following day, we left him.

I was there again at twelve, the morning after, and found De Potter (the Belgian patriot) and Dr. Bowring, with the phrenologist, waiting to undergo the same operation. The preparations looked very formidable, A frame, of the length of the human body, lay in the middle of the room, with a wooden bowl to receive the head, a mattress, and a long white dress to prevent stain to the clothes. As I was the youngest, I took my turn first. It was very like a preparation for being beheaded. My neck was bared, my hair cut, and the long white dress put on. The back of the head is taken first; and, as I was only immersed up to the ears in the liquid plaster, this was not very alarming. The second part, however, demanded more patience. My head was put once more into the stiffened mould of the first half, and as soon as I could get my features composed I was ordered to shut my eyes; my hair was oiled and laid smooth, and the liquid plaster poured slowly over my mouth, eyes, and forehead, till I was cased completely in a stiffening mask. The material was then poured on thickly, till the mask was two or three inches thick, and the voices of those standing over me were scarcely audible. I breathed pretty freely through the orifices at my nose; but the dangerous experiment of Mademoiselle Sontag, who was nearly smothered in the same operation, came across my mind rather vividly; and it seemed to me that the doctor handled the plaster quite too ungingerly, when he came to mould about my nostrils. After a half hour's imprisonment, the plaster became sufficiently hardened, and the thread which was laid upon my face was drawn through, dividing the mask into two parts. It was then gradually removed, pulling very tenaciously upon my eyelashes and eyebrows, and leaving all the cavities of my face filled with particles of lime. The process is a tribute to vanity, which one would not be willing to pay very often.

I looked on at Dr. Bowring's incarceration with no great feeling of relief. It is rather worse to see than to experience, I think. The poet is a nervous man; and as long as the muscles of his face were visible, his lips, eyelids, and mouth, were quivering so violently that I scarcely believed it would be possible to get an impression of them. He has a beautiful face for a scholar--clear, well-cut, finished features, expressive of great purity of thought; and a forehead of n.o.ble amplitude, white and polished as marble. His hair is black and curling (indicating in most cases, as Dr. Spurzheim remarked, activity of mind), and forms a cla.s.sical relief to his handsome temples.

Altogether, his head would look well in a picture, though his ordinary and ungraceful dress, and quick, bustling manner, rather destroy the effect of it in society.

De Potter is one of the n.o.blest-looking men I ever saw. He is quite bald, with a broad, ample, majestic head, the very model of dignity and intellect. Dr. Spurzheim considers his head one of the most extraordinary he has met. _Firmness_ is the great development of its organs. His tone and manner are calm and very impressive, and he looks made for great occasions--a man stamped with the superiority which others acknowledge when circ.u.mstances demand it. He employs himself in literary pursuits at Paris, and has just published a pamphlet on "the manner of conducting a revolution, so that no after-revolution shall be necessary." I have translated the t.i.tle awkwardly, but that is the subject.

I have since heard Dr. Spurzheim lecture twice, and have been with him to a meeting of the "Anthropological Society" (of which he is the president and De Potter the secretary), where I witnessed the dissection of the human brain. It was a most interesting and satisfactory experiment, as an ill.u.s.tration of phrenology. David the sculptor is a member of the society, and was present. He looks more like a soldier than an artist, however--wearing the cross of the Legion of Honor, with a military frock coat, and an erect, stern, military carriage. Spurzheim lectures in a free, easy, unconstrained style, with occasionally a little humor, and draws his arguments from admitted facts only. Nothing could be more reasonable than his premises, and nothing more like an axiom than the results, as far as I have heard him. At any rate, true or false, his theory is one of extreme interest, and no time can be wasted in examining it; for it is the study of man, and therefore the most important of studies.

I have had several long conversations with Dr. Spurzheim about America, and have at last obtained his positive a.s.surance that he would visit it. He gave me permission this morning to say (what I am sure all lovers of knowledge will be pleased to hear) that he should sail for New York in the course of the ensuing summer, and pa.s.s a year or more in lecturing and travelling in the United States. He is a man to obtain the immediate confidence and respect of a people like ours, of the highest moral worth, and the most candid and open mind.

LETTER XXI.

DEPARTURE FROM PARIS--DESULTORY REMARKS.

I take my departure from Paris to-morrow. I have just been making preparations to pack, and it has given me a fit of bad spirits. I have been in France only a few months, but if I had lived my life here, I could not be more at home. In my almost universal acquaintance, I have of course made pleasant friends, and, however time and travel should make us indifferent to such volant attachments, I can not now cast off these threads of intimacy, without pulling a little upon very sincere feelings. I have been burning the ma.s.s of papers and cards that have acc.u.mulated in my drawers; and the sight of these French invitations, mementoes, as they are, of delightful and fascinating hours, almost staggers my resolution of departure. It has been an intoxicating time to me. Aside from lighter attractions, this metropolis collects within itself so much of the distinction and genius of the world; and gifted men in Paris, coming here merely for pleasure, are so peculiarly accessible, that one looks upon them as friends to whom he has become attached and accustomed, and leaves the sphere in which he has met them, as if he had been a part of it, and had a right to be regretted.

I do not think I shall ever spend so pleasant a winter again. And then my local interest is not a light one. I am a great lover of out-of-doors, and I have ransacked Paris thoroughly. I know it all from its broad faubourgs to its obscurest _cul de sac_. I have hunted with antiquaries for coins and old armor; with lovers of adventure for the amusing and odd; with the curious for traces of history; with the romantic for the picturesque. Paris is a world for research. It contains more odd places, I believe, more odd people, and every way more material for uncommon amus.e.m.e.nt, than any other city in the universe. One might live a life of novelty without crossing the barrier. All this insensibly attaches one. My eye wanders at this moment from my paper to these lovely gardens lying beneath my window, and I could not feel more regret if they were mine. Just over the long line of low clipped trees, edging the fas.h.i.+onable terrace, I see the windows of the king within half a stone's throw--the windows at which Napoleon has stood, and the long line of the monarchs of France, and it has become to me so much a habit of thought, sitting here in the twilight and musing on the thousand, thousand things linked with the spot my eye embraces, that I feel as if I had grown to it--as if Paris had become to me, what it is proverbially and naturally enough to a Frenchman--"the world."

I have other a.s.sociations which I part from less painfully, because I hope at some future time to renew them--those with my own countrymen.

There are few pleasanter circles than that of the Americans in Paris.

Lafayette and his numerous family make a part of them. I could not learn to love this good man more, but seeing him often brings one's reverence more within the limits of the affections; and I consider the little of his attention that has fallen to my share the honored part of my life, and the part best worth recording and remembering. He called upon me a day or two ago, to leave with me some copies of a translation of Mr. Cooper's letter on the finances of our government, to be sent to my friend Dr. Howe; but, to my regret, I did not see him. He neglects no American, and is ever busied about some project connected with their welfare. May G.o.d continue to bless him!

And speaking of Mr. Cooper, no one who loves or owns a pride in his native land, can live abroad without feeling every day what we owe to the patriotism as well as the genius of this gifted man. If there is an individual who loves the soil that gave him birth, and so shows it that we are more respected for it, it is he. Mr. Cooper's position is a high one; he has great advantages, and he improves them to the uttermost. His benevolence and activity in all enterprises for the relief of suffering, give him influence, and he employs it like a true philanthropist and a real lover of his country. I say this particularly, though it may look like too personal a remark, because Americans abroad are _not_ always _national_. I am often mortified by reproaches from foreigners, quoting admissions made by my countrymen, which should be the last on their lips. A very distinguished person told me a day or two since, that "the Americans abroad were the worst enemies we had in Europe." It is difficult to conceive at home how such a remark stings. Proportionately, one takes a true patriot to his heart and I feel it right to say here, that the love of country and active benevolence of Mr. Cooper distinguish him abroad, even more than his genius. His house is one of the most hospitable and agreeable in Paris; and with Morse and the circle of artists and men of distinction and worth about him, he is an acquaintance sincerely to regret leaving.

From Mr. Rives, our Minister, I have received every possible kindness.

He has attached me to his legation, to facilitate my access to other courts and the society of other cities, and to free me from all delays and annoyances at frontiers and custom-houses. It is a particular and valuable kindness, and I feel a pleasure in acknowledging it. Then there is Dr. Bowring, the lover and defender of the United States, who, as the editor of the Westminster Review, should be well remembered in America, and of him I have seen much, and from him I have received great kindness. Altogether, as I said before, Paris is a home to me, and I leave it with a heavy heart.

I have taken a place on the top of the diligence _for a week_. It is a long while to occupy one seat, but the weather and the season are delicious; and in the covered and roomy cabriolet, with the _conducteur_ for a living reference, and all the appliances for comfort, I expect to live very pleasantly, night and day, till I reach Ma.r.s.eilles. _Vaucluse_ is on the way, and I shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps. At Ma.r.s.eilles I propose to take the steamboat for Leghorn, and thence get directly to Florence, where I shall remain till I become familiar with the Italian, at least. I lay down my pen till all this plan of travel is accomplished, and so, for the present, adieu!